The Rattler golf team is playing in its second tournament in two weeks after a tough outing in Mississippi.
Florida A&M finished tied for 12that the Frito-Lay/AT&T Intercollegiate in Philadelphia, Miss. The team finished the tournament with a score of 648. Freshman Randon Holt led FAMU with a score of 152. Holt finished the tournament tied for tenth individually.
FAMU fell behind early on the first nine holes. They finished the first day of the tournament with a score of 333.
“The front nine was difficult for the whole team,” Holt said.
Junior Shephard Archie III said that mental mistakes made the front nine difficult for himself in particular.
“The mistakes I made were dumb mistakes,” Archie said.”I made mistakes a college golfer shouldn’t make.”
The team settled into the course on the second day of the tournament, but the first day was too much to overcome. FAMU had a score of 315 on the second day.
“After everyone got the chance to get accustomed to the course, got the nervousness out and everything else, scores came down,” Holt said.
The next tournament for the FAMU golf team is the Bethune-Cookman University Invitational in Daytona Beach, Fla. The tournament will be played at the Legends course at LPGA International. It begins only four days after the team returned from Philadelphia.
“Our practicing is very limited,” coach Marvin Green said.
Archie doesn’t believe the lack of practice time this week will have a negative effect on the team.
“With as far we are right now and as long we practice, most mistakes we make are mental, nothing physical,” Archie said.
The team is not experienced with the Legends. They did not have the course on schedule between 2007 and 2010.
The Legends has a reputation of being a difficult course to play on. One review for the course describes it as one word: trouble. It mentions accuracy as being the key to success on the course.
The Legends has a course rating of 74.6 at the highest level of play. Course ratings measure how difficult a golf course is for scratch golfers. It estimates how many strokes it should take scratch golfers to complete the course.
Scratch golfers are golfers who have a handicap of zero. Course ratings typically fall within the range of 67 to 77.
The BCU Invitational will be played on Feb. 25 through Feb. 27.